Duplicate invisible volume of my harddrive

Ok, I have something that I have never seen before. I have a "phantom" volume/folder on my 17"PB running 10.4.5. This volume is only accessible via saving to it from applications or opening said files from the volume/folder. This folde when I examine it through a saveas finder window, I see it is basically a duplicate of my harddrive, applications and all. While this is annoying when I save a file to the phantom desktop and I cannot find it, it is also a HUGE issue as this invisible folder/volume is taking up what seems to be about 45gigs of disk space.
I have archived and installed Tiger to no change. Any ideas/help would be greatly appreciated. I am going to boot to Disk Warrior and see what that can do for me.

Eric,
Well, you certainly have a problem here. Normally, you will have a symbolic link that points to the root level of your Hard Drive in this directory, along with any other mounted volumes. Notice that the last line in your post is a link that points to "/." That's the one. Also, items in this folder will be dynamic, meaning that they come and go as volumes are mounted/unmounted. This folder is the "mount point" for all volumes other than your boot volume.
In your Volumes folder, however, you have what appears to be a real folder that appears to be named with the name of your boot volume. The link that you would normally have does point to your boot volume, but it is named with an appended "1." This will happen automatically when there would otherwise be duplicates with the same name.
Somehow, you have managed to gain a copy of your boot volume in the "Volumes" folder. Kind of messed up, but it shouldn't be too hard to fix....
Click on yor Desktop to bring the Finder to the front, then choose Go>Go to Folder.... In the resultant dialogue, type "/Volumes and press <RETURN> (or click "Go"). This will open a window showing you the contents of your "Volumes" folder (which is normally hidden).
OK, you should see a symbolic link (like an alias) named "Spidey 17 1," and a folder named "Spidey 17." Here's what we are going to do: First, drag the folder to your trash, authenticating if asked. Second, you will then rename "Spidey 17 1" to "Spidey 17." Once you have performed these changes, restart your computer.
Caution: It is entirely possible, even likely based on your original post, that you have some items in the folder (which you are moving to the trash) that do not exist anywhere else. You must recover these items before emptying the trash, if losing them entirely will be a problem. You might want to sort through that folder to recover any files before you actually move it to the trash. Go slowly and carefully, and all should be well.
When you are satisfied that you have recovered any unique files from that folder, empty your trash to recover your disk space.
Scott

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Duplicate 'invisible' photos are being created when I download from camera

Hi all,
Recently spotted a weird thing happening when I download images from my Nikon D200. I use Image Capture, but not sure if that's the problem. Hopefully you guys can help.
Basically, when burning a DVD of images for a friend, I noticed that if I dragged over the folder that contained the downloaded images, a new disc was created in Toast, and the disc size matched the size of the folder as seen in the Finder. However, if I created a blank disc and just copied over the folder contents themselves, not the actual folder, the disc size was 1.5GB smaller.
So, I fired up TinkerTool and turned on Invisible Files in the Finder, and was shocked to discover that throughout my hard drive, in the folders I download photos into from my camera there are duplicate invisible 'photos' with a period at the start of their name (rendering them invisible) that are the size of a full high res photo each - essentially doubling the size of the folder. If I delete a photo in the Finder, it's invisible counterpart doesn't get deleted with it - so what the heck are they? They're taking up GB upon GB upon GB of space on my drive and I can't even see them unless I use TinkerTool.

I am not a software engineer, but I doubt if these are left over temp files.
More than likely, capture keeps both - the original and the colour managed files. Why hidden, no idea. Maybe it's the camera telling it to do so, maybe some software can "see" both depending on the colour profile selected. Maybe, indeed it's a bug in the software. The best way to find out is to send a bug report and Apple will answer.
If you are using the Spyder you should not colour manage the images at all.
the only profile you should use it the Spyder one.
Colour profile is basically a "translator" of RGB colour values, which displays (and prints) the images with a specific "colour shift".
Each time you acquire an image there is an error built in into the image (no device is perfect), then when displayed on a screen, this screen will introduce another colour shift, then the printer will shift the colours again, and you may end up with wrong colours in the output; and that's where the calibration and colour profiling comes in.
Spyder will scan your screen and adjust it so that the colours are as true as possible. If will not fix any of the camera problems, but at least on a screen you get exactly the colours that the camera took.
(Calibrating a camera is normally not needed, but it can be done too.)
Now, if your screen in Spyder'ed (?) then any software you use to edit the shots in should be set to use the Spyder colour profile, otherwise, you'll not see the true representation of your colours.
When it comes to printing... don't even get me started Most commercial printing joints will supply you with their machine's profile, for home printers - trawl the Internet for the profiles or spend A LOT of money on print calibration.
I did check and I have no hidden files, I do not ask Capture to colour manage my shots.
I also never shoot JPEGs, RAW only. Later if I know I don't want an image for editing, but want to keep it, I dump it to a JPG and delete the RAW.
A silly question here, why not use the Nikon's provided software to download the pix?
Hope that helps a little.
You can check my recent work here:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/braincandy
cheers

Startup disk contains replica of itself inside invisible Volume folder

Hello. Bizarrely, my startup disk contains an image of itself, naturally diminishing the available disk space. It sits inside an invisible folder, namely: Volumes/[name of the starup disk]. This invisible folder "Volumes". Now, inside this folder are images (or folders) of all the volumes on the machine, and of each of them finder claims a size that maches the size of the date on it. But the folder "Volumes" itself is claimed to be the almost size of all the date on the startup disk except the Volumes folder itself. So Users, Applications, Library and System together are the same size as this invisible Volumes folder—almost. The Caches folders are missing inside the Volumes folder. And what finder counts as used space on that startup disk is just all the files including the size of that Volumes folder.
I don't think that's the way it should be, is it?

Hello H-C-R. no, I'm not. It may very well be that /Volumes folder. It doesn't display a / in the folder name, but maybe that's not what you mean. Anyway, it is like I said an invisible folder entitled "Volumes", and it contains what looks like all volumes connected, and their respective size count displays the size of the data each. All those folder's have icons like the volumes they refer to (no indication of them being aliases), except the startup volume. which is the volume that ominous invisible Volumes folder is sited on, too. That one is present twice. Once as a folder bearing the name of the volume, but not it's icon, and once as an alias bearing the name of the volume with [space]1 added to it, and the volume's icon. And the invisible Volumes folder on the startup disk has a size count, and that size count adds to the Used count of that startup disk. And since this is a long explanation for something visible at one sight, I'll give you a picture —
hope that it will be legible. Nice avatar icon btw. (yours).
Hello, Mr. Nanita, too. Does it contain only that alias?

Duplicate shared volume on Desktop

Hello,
I sometimes have duplicate shared volume on my desktop. When I open
/Volumes I can see theVolume, theVolume-1, theVolume-2, ...
the shared volumes are mounted using Applescript and unmounting after a copy is done.
How can I prevent this ?
regards,
Didier.

Hi jbbcck, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Try doing a Get Info on the mounted Volumes/Devices on one that does connect, any clues there?
Have you checked the IPs of the drive & the Tiger Macs?

Backing up invisible volumes

This is more of a curiosity than a serious issue. Recently I've discovered the Apple Color has been placing all its render files in an invisible volume on my MBP hard drive. I do regular time machine back ups, and was wondering if time machine has been backing up this data. How could I verify this?
Thanks

www.m-68.org wrote:
This is more of a curiosity than a serious issue. Recently I've discovered the Apple Color has been placing all its render files in an invisible volume on my MBP hard drive. I do regular time machine back ups, and was wondering if time machine has been backing up this data. How could I verify this?
Thanks
In Finder, search for one of the files or the folder, if you know the name.
When you search, you will have to click the Action gear and select Show Search Criteria and under Kind select File Visibility and then next to it check invisible.
If these options do not appear, then select Other at the bottom of the first dropdown and check all the items you think you will ever want in a search, while you are there, but include File invisible no matter what else.
Now when you have selected to see invisible files, find your particular file.
That was step 1
Step 2. While the Finder is looking at your invisible file, click the TM button in the dock.
You will now see whether or not TM has backed it up. My surmise is that it has done so, but I have been wrong about these things before.
Let us know what you find.

Render/Project/Media on Invisible Volume called "Color"

Hi,
I dived straight into color and started playing around. I didn't notice the preferences saying where to put render/media and project files and it was set to
volumes/color/
This appears to be an invisible volume, ie I can access it via color itself but not in the finder.
Realising my mistake a bit later I changed the directories, but there is a about 60gb of render files etc on that volume that I want to erase. Does anyone know how I can access it via the finder to erase it ?
Thanks.
Trig

Hi,
thanks for response, I tried finding it with Disk Utility, but it doesn't show in the list. As I said it appears to be an invisible volume. I can see it with terminal, but don't know the right commands to make it visible.
Trig

Three invisible volumes eating up disk space

I used Carbon Copy Cloner to load up a new external drive with the contents of my MBP. After it finished my Users folder it began copying "Volumes / LaCie 500GB."
It wouldn't show up in Finder, so I presumed it was an invisible file, as best I understand it. I ran GrandPerspective to get a multicolor image depicting the relative sizes of all files hierarchically. It displayed clearly not just that LaCie, but two others as well. The three volumes use up some 85GB — a third of my drive.
I've confirmed that the contents are all duplicates (and triplicates) of various parts of my main drive. It seems evident that I can just delete them, but I'd like to know of any cautions anyone may know.
And what might I have done to copy the same external onto my MBP — three times? OR what other process might make that happen? I have CCC scheduled to back up my MBP onto the LaCie, but not back the other way.
Thanks.

WZZZ wrote:
Why this would have happened three times is certainly something to investigate. Is the LaCie mounting properly otherwise?
Now that I've read the page through more completely, I find that the last paragraph on that page evidently wraps it all up:
"...you must ensure that the target will remain available throughout the cloning so that you don't have to do this clearing up too often!"
This brings to mind that occasionally one of my FW cables to this drive gets bumped and disconnects. Not good, I know. But I'd bet this is what's caused it. I have the page bookmarked and now I'll know where to return.

Downloaded Files go to invisible volume

While saving a copy of a pdf file using safari,the boxes that came up showing where to save to, was for a grayed out folder labeled volumes. Within this volumes was folders of my hard drives also grayed out Along with other files that I had downloaded about 2 weeks ago. I cannot access any of these files. I would like to get rid of this "volumes" folder ,but how is the question?

Hi macav8tr, and a warm welcome to the forum!
We can't really get rid of this folder, Volumes is where an alias to your hard drive ("/" at boot) is placed at startup, and where all the "mount points" for auxiliary drives are created for you to access them. This folder is normally hidden from view.
In finder, select Go menu>Go to Folder, and go to "/volumes".
Drives with an extra 1 on the end have a side-effect of mounting a drive with the same name as the system already think exists. Try trashing the duplicates with a 1, and reboot.
In this saving from Safari, are you not able to change to a good location?
In Safari>Preferences>General, have you set a Download Location?

Hard Disk filled with invisible volume

My HD,internal to my MacBookPro is named iPal
I use SuperDuper to create a bootable clone on a Western Digital External HD , brand name "My Book" which is the name I left for that drive
My MBP is 17 months old and the OEM Hitachi HD is 320 Gig,with approx 288 actually usable after formatting.
I have been pleased to note that I easily had half of my HD space left
Did my periodic back up: IPal to My Book approx 2 weeks ago.
At the time I did think the smart backup was taking far too long- seems like nearly 3 hours.
Early this past week I was horrified to be getting alerts that I was down to 15% of my HD space or roughly 45 GB remaining.
Could not find what was eating up space
I looked everywhere.. tossed ,disabled TechTool Pro "protection" which has a known issue of stealing multi Gig to create backup directories. Trashed those .Long story short. I had 45GB space left.
So,I purchased a new larger internal HD which I installed this weekend
Used SuperDuper to clone the new HD precisely to the internal.
new drive works wonderfully and everything is in place
But I was shocked to see that my new HD registers as having only 125 GB filled with my stuff.375 GB FREE!
the now externalized 320 GB,with replaced directory( Disk Warrior)), STILL shows only 45 GB free.
Same stuff..
Tonight I used Omni's Disc Sweeper and saw that
320 HD contains a Volume entitled "My Book" with 125 GB of stuff on iPal.
That number explains why the 320 HD is so full
but altho OmniSweeper sees it, I cannot find the volume nor its components..
The HD named iPal believes Western Digital My Book is internalized and part of it so the 320 HD shows those 125 GB as used.
Perhaps that explains the overly lengthy backup I noted two weeks ago.?
Have you ever had reports of something like this?Is this SuperDuper? Is it the Western Digital Drive?
I would like to know so I can protect from this.
When I reformat the now external 320 HD I will of course regain my space. But how did this happen?
Has anyone heard of something like this?

Yes, I have puzzled through precisely that scenario. I did set up the external target drive but it did not get a backup on 3/31 (when this happened). The backup was placed on my internal drive,hence eating so much space.
I am not sure if SuperDuper lost contact with the external HD but what I realized is:
Techtool Pro's protection control panel backs up the start up disk's directory apparently whenever there is a change such as an application installed, removed etc. So there are a bunch of these directories which in themselves gobble several gigabytes of disk space. The TechTool Pro apparently also backed up/copied the directory on backup drive and put those files into a folder , on my HD into a Volume (hidden) naming the folder the same name as the external Hard Drive's name.
I am not sure why but Super Duper thought the folder , created by TTP, named the same as the targer external HD,was where to put the backup. SuperDuper did what it was told to do, backed up into My Book except the My Book was the volume on my boot, internal HD
I used Filebuddy to make the hidden /Volume/My Book, make it visible and deleted it thus restoring 125 gig free space to the drive.
Apparently a volume is a volume to these back up programs (CCC or SuperDuper
I have turned off TTP, will reformat the back up drive with a new name,do a fresh complete backup and hope this does not happen again. Thank you

Dealing with 6,000 duplicates

Is there any way to get ride of 6,000 duplicate songs on an external harddrive. The Itunes duplicate button shows over 12,000, so do I have to delete every other song right? If i delete all in the window I understand i will lose the original and the duplicate. In otherword can i tell it to just show duplicates, then i can erase all? This is taking me forever hours over hours.

Here is another option that I just figured out while trying to deal with my 15,000 duplicates. The file naming structure of all my duplicates ended in either "song title 1.mp3, song title 1.m4p or song title 2.mp3, song title 2.m4p, etc." depending on how many duplicates there were of each file and the audio format. I used spotlight to search my music folder by name, using the additional constraint of "ends with" and searched for all files that "end with" "1.mp3, 1.m4p, etc."
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http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=removedeadsuper
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That solved the problem without having to do the manual selection of tracks in iTunes or my music folder.

How do I remove duplicate icon in Startup Manager?

Hi,
I had an unsuccessful attempt at upgrading my already boot camp'd MacBook Air to Mavericks. After successfully upgrading to Mavericks, Startup Manager now shows 2 Mac volumes which are actually the same volume (both icons will startup the same Mac volume ok) as well as 1 Windows volume. How do I remove one of the duplicate Mac volume icons? Disk Utility only shows the 1 Mac partition and 1 Bootcamp partition running Windows.
Thanks

From iTunes' menu, choose View > Show Duplicate Items. Then choose one of each duplicate. Control click on it and choose delete.

Harddrive-noise after security update

My stock mac pro machine was dead quit, since August....
Yesterday I did the security update and maybe it is coincidental , but can hear now , intermittently, the turning of the hard drive even while not doing anything labour intensive ( just reading this forum by example}...
Do others experience this as well and what could be the cause of this???
Thank you ..

Thank you Michael for your quick response on this Christmasday: I could not find " smart analsys" in disk utility; but did " verify permissions for macintosh HD" ....It says:
Permissions differ on ./Applications/ITunes.app/Contents/Frameworks/InternetUtilities.bundle/Contents /MacOS/InternetUtilities,should be-rw-rwr--' they are -rwxrwxr-x
Permissions differ on ./private/var/log/secure.log, should be -rw-----, they are -rw-r-----
Permissions verification complete
the privileges have been verified or repaired on the selected volume
It made harddrive noise retrieving this information...After looking at this info , should I take some other action... I am sort of new with computing...
Thanks a lot and happy Hollydays

Erasing Volumes using Disk Utility

I used Disk Utility to make copies of numerous cds and dvds. Doing this created a long list of volumes on my harddrive that I can not delete using erase or erase empty space (these fields are grayed out). I tried booting from the OSX disc however when I did that the volumes weren't even visibile. I also tried converting the disk images to a writeable format. All this did was make a copy of the existing volume. Does anyone know how to delete Volumes in another way, either using disk utiltiy or other software?
Thanks,
Dean
Macbook Mac OS X (10.4.7) disk utility, delete or erase volumes

If you are getting nothing for file system what has gone wrong is something in your computer/operating system, not on the iPod.
Try running Scandisk first, then formatting or, at this is not recommended generally, if that doesn't work partition the iPod and then format it.
But you might also want to consider a reload of XP. I reiterate, if it gave you nothing to select under file system this is most likely a problem with your operating system or USB chain.

Where did this volume come from?

I was just about to burn a disk image I made from iDVD onto a DVD-R and when I was using Disk Utility to set it up I got a window titled "Select Image to Burn" that listed the following volumes.
iMac Clone
Macintosh HD
Microsoft Office 2000 Pro.dmg
Netfolder
Time Machine.
I recognize the Microsoft Office 2000 Pro.dmg as something I used when I was trying to set up Virtual PC but I don't know why it is in this list or how to get rid of it. It is not on my desktop and this is the first time I've seen it. I tried to drag it to the trash but it still remains. All of the other volumes I recognize.
Where and what is this file and how do I get rid of it?
Thanks,
David

Try this:
1. In the Finder's Go menu items, select the "Go to Folder..." option
2. Type in this
/Volumes
and hit the the Go button
3. A new Finder window will open displaying the contents of the otherwise invisible Volumes folder
4. Check the list--what SHOULD be there are just aliases to all your mounted drives, if the errant dmg file is there drag it out and onto the Desktop
Sometimes mishaps happen and odd things get lodged in the /Volumes folder. Sound like this might be the case.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

How do you Automatically Copy Images From Camera?

I would like to create an AppleScript that will run when I plug in my digital camera. Here is what I cannot figure out.
How to make it run when the camera is plugged in.
How tow to copy images from camera to a designated folder.
Thanks!

You can do all you requested - without 'AppleScript'.
01. Connect your camera launch 'Image Capture' ('/Applications/' folder - if it does not automatically launch.
02. Select the 'Image Capture, Preferences...' menu item.
03. Click on the 'General' tab.
04. From the 'Camera:' 'When a camera is connected, open:' pop up menu - select the 'Image Capture.app' menu item.
05. From the 'Devices' menu select your camera from the menu items list. A window will appear with the title of your camera.
06. From the 'Download To:' pop up menu select where to save the camera's photographs. You can select any folder anywhere on your hard disk drive(s).
07. Click the 'Options...' button, and from the drop down sheet click on the 'Connection Options' 'Automatically download all items' check box - to add a check mark. There are other options you may have be interested in.
08. Click on the 'OK' button.
09. If you want to download the photographs now - click on the window's 'Download All' button. Or, to test the above setting changes - quit 'Image Capture' and disconnect your camera. Then reconnect the camera - and watch the above setting changes take effect.
Note:
The above automatic action can also happen if the storage device of the camera were inserted into a USB digital camera card reader. So long as apply the Steps above, and you select the USB digital camera card reader from the 'Devices' menu's menu item list in Step 05 above.
'Image Capture' is not scriptable; but, may be control-able via 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "Image Capture" ....
When a camera is connect to the Mac, the storage card of the camera is mounted onto the 'Desktop' and also listed, as an alias, in the (invisible) '/Volumes/' folder.
Now that you know the name of the storage card ... you can create a 'Folder Action Script' (an example is presented below) and save it into the '/Library/Script/Folder Action Scripts/' folder,
Open the '/Volumes./' folder (in 'Finder' via 'Go, Go to Folder' - enter '/Volumes/').
Perform a right button click ('<control> - click, for single button users) on the 'Volumes' folder's window, and select 'Enable Folder Actions' (if not already).
Rpeat the right button click (<control> click) and select 'Attach a Folder Action...' - selecting your script ('Volumes_FAS.scpt' as shown below).
Below is a 'Folder Action Script' example - where you will have to substitute 'NO NAME' with the name of your digital camera's storage card's name.
-- --- Save code as a script with the name 'Volumes_FAS.scpt' --- --
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
set myStorageCard to "NO NAME" -- The name of my 1 GB stroage card. The name of your card may differ.
repeat with i in added_items
tell application "Finder" to set tName to (name of i) as string -- Obtain name of mounted storage card.
if (tName is equal to myStorageCard) then my handle_card(i) -- If my storage card, continue processing.
end repeat
end adding folder items to
on handlecard(localVolume)
set folder_Path to ((path to desktop folder from user domain) as string) -- Path to 'Desktop' folder.
set download_Folder to "NO_NAME Photographs" -- Name of folder to store storage card's items (files and folders).
-- create download_Folder, if it does not exists.
tell application "Finder" to if (not (exists folder (folder_Path & download_Folder))) then make new folder at (folder_Path as alias) with properties {name:download_Folder}
-- Duplicate all the items (files and folders) of the storage device to the '~/Desktop/NO_NAME Photographs' folder.
tell application "Finder" to duplicate items of local_Volume to (folder_Path & download_Folder) as alias
end handle_card
-- --- End of code --- --
Review 'Finder's dictionary (in 'Script Editor') for the various ways to incorporate 'duplicate ...'.
Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Duplicate invisible volume of my harddrive

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